Portal de Periódicos da CAPES

Cultures of the Body in Colonial Bengal: The Career of Gobor Guha

2012; Routledge; Volume: 29; Issue: 12 Linguagem: Inglês

10.1080/09523367.2012.714931

1743-9035

Abhijit Sen Gupta,

Sports Analytics and Performance

Abstract In recent years, the history of modern Indian wrestling – or kushti – has begun to receive scholarly attention. Most accounts agree that the last decades of the nineteenth century saw the coming of the modern form of this ancient Indian sport, with Indian wrestlers emerging from the confines of their akharas and fighting with their Western counterparts. But while there are some scholarly accounts of north Indian wrestling, and Gama in particular, the rest of the country has not fared well. What has also been lacking is a perspective that considers wrestling as one of the many cultures of the body which characterised the nationalist phase in Indian history, dating from roughly the end of the nineteenth century till the third decade of the twentieth. During this time, a kind of muscular nationalism was beginning to gain ground in Bengal. Fed up of being stigmatised as a ‘frail and effeminate’ race, Bengalis – both men and women – began to participate in various kinds of physical cultures, ranging from martial arts to gymnastics, trapeze acts to hot-air ballooning. With the rise of the swadeshi movement in the first decade of the twentieth century, akharas or gymnasiums mushroomed all over north Calcutta. In this paper, I will survey the history of such cultures in colonial Bengal, with particular reference to the figure of the wrestler Gobor Guha, who still remains the only Indian to win a world heavyweight title in wrestling. Keywords: wrestlingBengalphysical culturesmasculinitiesnationalismView correction statement:Erratum Acknowledgements I am indebted to Bishwanath Dutta and Deeptanil Ray for their valuable help and comments in researching and writing this paper. Notes 1. Alter, The Wrestler's Body; Noble, ‘“The Lion of the Punjab”’. 2. Alter, ‘Somatic Nationalism’, 559. 3. Ibid., 559–60. 4. Alter, ‘The Body of One Color’, 49. 5. Alter, ‘Somatic Nationalism’, 581. 6. Chowdhury, The Frail Hero and Virile History, 21. 7. ‘Bengali Games and Amusements,’ 344. 8. ‘Wrestling Match’, 192. 9. Alter, ‘The Body of One Color’, 61 10. Chowdhury, The Frail Hero and Virile History, 25 11. Rosselli, ‘The Self-Image of Effeteness’, 129–30. 12. Chaudhurani, The Many Worlds of Sarala Devi, 143. 13. Ibid., 142. 14. Alter, ‘Indian Clubs and Colonialism’, 509. 15. Rosselli, ‘The Self-Image of Effeteness’, 144. 16. The original location of the akhada was 65, Masjidbari Street in Calcutta. A dairy of 40 cows and 30 goats was set up next to the house in order to provide a constant supply of milk and butter for the budding wrestlers. In time, a number of professional wrestlers from North India were employed by the Guha family as trainers. See Basu, Deshpremik mallabeer gobar, 3. 17. Basu, Deshpremik mallabeer gobar, 12–13. 18. Chapman, Sandow the Magnificent, 157. 19. Majumder, Balider katha, 12. 20. Ibid., 88. 21. Ibid., 24–5. 22. Alter, ‘The Body of One Color’, 60. 23. Desbonnet, Les Rois de la Lutte, 150. 24. Noble, ‘“The Lion of the Punjab”’, 109. 25. Basu, Deshpremik mallabeer gobar, 22. 26. ‘Scotland's Strongman & Wrestler, Jimmy Esson’. 27. ‘Jack Johnson’, http://www.mmbolding.com/Heavyweights/Boxer_vs._Wrestler_Jack_Johnson.htm 28. ‘German hits Johnson’, New York Times, November 26, 1913, 1, available at http://www.mmbolding.com/Heavyweights/Boxer_vs._Wrestler_Jack_Johnson.htm 29. Basu, Deshpremik mallabeer gobar, 25–7. 30. Ibid., 30. 31. Ibid., 31. 32. Ibid., 36. 33. Wikipedia, ‘Rear Naked Choke’. 34. ‘Professional Wrestling March 1922’; ‘Mat Potpourri 1922’. 35. Quoted in ‘Some Contemporary Foreign Tributes’, Centenary Volume of Gobar Guha, n.p. 36. Roy, ‘Ekhon jaader dekhchi’ 141–2. 37. Hornbaker, National Wrestling Alliance, 96. 38. ‘A Bengalee Athlete in Europe and America’, Servant of India, July 7, 1922. 39. Ripley, ‘The Gold Eater’, The Globe and Commercial Advertiser (New York), January 21, 1921. 40. ‘When Jatindra discusses Mr Bernard Shaw’, The San Francisco Call, August 30, 1921. 41. Laurie Pratt, ‘Gobar no Goof – Lady Expert’, The San Francisco Call, September 5, 1921. 42. ‘Rabindranath Tagore – His Life and Teachings’, quoted in Swarane, 15. 43. ‘Letter by J.C. Goho’, Standard Examiner, June 30, 1926, 12–13; Swarane, 12–14. 44. ‘Large number hears Sissons’, Swarane, 12. 45. ‘Letter by J.C. Goho’.